S' 
o 
relies on authority, but it must have the approval of the judgment to the facts, 
and the assent of the understanding to the arguments on which it is founded. 
I purpose in the following short papers to examine the facts and argu- 
ments upon which the Palaeolithic age is attempted to be established ; and to 
give an abstract of the results of antiquarian and geological surveys made to 
this end, extending in time over a period of ten years, and in range from the 
Scilly Isles to Norfolk, from Belgium to the Somme, and to Pressigny-le- 
Grand. 
At the outset it is necessary to define the term Palaeolithic age, and I am 
content to abide by the definition of the period given by Sir John Lubbock 
in his Pre-Historic Times, p. 2, in which he describes it as “ that of the 
drift ; when man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, the 
cave bear, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals. This we 
may call the Palaeolithic period.” 
Sir Charles Lyell, writing three years after and describing the Reindeer 
period of M. Lartet, to which the Caves of the Dordogne belong, says 
“ This period may be considered as intermediate between the Neolithic 
and Palaeolithic ages, but it has been classed provisionally by Sir J. Lubbock 
as Palaeolithic.” And Sir Charles further manifests a desire to include 
the cavern deposits in the first Stone age, when he says : u Lastly we 
arrive at the still older monuments of the Palaeolithic period, properly so 
called, which consist chiefly of unpolished stone instruments buried in 
ancient gravels and in the mud and stalagmite of caves.” ( Principles of 
Geology , vol. ii., 10th ed., p. 559.) 
To admit the caverns into the Drift period would be to abandon all that 
has heretofore been said of the sequence of those deposits. In the descrip- 
tion of the Reindeer period, given in Peliquicz Aquitanicce , p. 25, we read, 
— “ Geologically a wide gap separates it from the Drift period.” It would 
also class Neolithic relics and bronze celts* with the Somme tools, for 
both of the former are found in caves beneath the stalagmite. I therefore 
restrict the definition of the Palaeolithic ag properly so called, to the 
PERIOD OF THE DRTFT. 
The time is now come when this subject can be fully and impartially 
investigated ; it has beemlaid before us in great detail in the publications of 
our leading geologists, and in the journals of the Anthropological Institute , 
and time has been given for others to investigate the facts and to gather what 
to many appears to be conflicting evidence. 
In pursuing this investigation I shall examine the facts and weigh the 
evidence on which the Palaeolithic age at present rests, and give the results 
of my personal surveys of the Drift deposits of England and France, founding 
my arguments only on well-ascertained natural facts. 
The first paper of the series will be on, — 
* See the description of the Heathery Burn Cave in the Geologist , 
voL v. p. 167. 
